Aviationtag EI-CVC Story - From Dublin, with Green
There are aircraft you recognise instantly on the ramp, even if you never bothered to memorise the registration. For Aer Lingus regulars, EI-CVC was one of those familiar faces: a compact Airbus A320, painted in shamrock colours, shuttling quietly in and out of Dublin for more than two decades.
In this article, we’ll follow EI-CVC’s journey from factory rollout to everyday workhorse, look at how its flying career ended and how its skin was upcycled into the Aviationtag EI-CVC edition, and place the aircraft within the wider story of the Aer Lingus fleet.
From rollout to routine
Life of EI-CVC
EI-CVC began life in Toulouse at the turn of the century. Built as an Airbus A320-214 with manufacturer serial number 1443, it performed its first flight on 28 February 2001 under the test registration F-WWBS. Just a few weeks later, on 6 April 2001, the aircraft was delivered to Aer Lingus and entered service in the Irish carrier’s short-haul fleet.
Like all Aer Lingus mainline aircraft, EI-CVC received a name: “St. Kealin / Caoilfhionn”, continuing the company tradition of honouring Irish saints across the fleet. From that point on, EI-CVC settled into the rhythm that defines the life of most European narrowbodies: early morning departures out of Dublin, quick turns in London, Manchester or Amsterdam, afternoon hops to sun destinations, and late returns home in the dark.
Configured with 174 economy seats, EI-CVC was built to move people efficiently rather than to turn heads. Yet aviation photographers clearly had a soft spot for it. Spotting databases show EI-CVC cropping up again and again over the years, captured at Dublin, Düsseldorf, Heathrow and other European airports, always in full Aer Lingus colours.
As Aer Lingus refreshed its branding and introduced revised liveries, EI-CVC increasingly became a link to an earlier visual era of the airline. For many passengers, it was simply “their” Aer Lingus Airbus: the one that took them on their first city break to London, their regular commute across the Irish Sea, or the holiday flight that marked the start of summer.
The magic, as so often in aviation, lay not in bold headlines but in repetition. Thousands of sectors, countless pushbacks from the same gates, the same taxiway turns at Dublin – EI-CVC quietly turned fuel and time into memories.
Last chapter, new life
From Service to Skin
No aircraft flies forever, and by the time EI-CVC entered its third decade, the Aer Lingus fleet around it had begun to change. More efficient A320neo jets and long-range A321LRs were arriving, and the airline – like many of its European peers – gradually started phasing out older A320ceo examples.
After more than twenty years of service, EI-CVC was finally retired from frontline duty. Its logbook by then told a story of tens of thousands of flight hours and cycles, most of them on routes that never made the news, but mattered intensely to the people on board: family visits, job interviews, relocations, honeymoons, weekend escapes from the Irish rain (and sunshine).
Instead of disappearing quietly into a scrapyard, the aircraft’s fuselage was carefully stripped, with selected sections of the original skin set aside for a very different purpose. Those aluminium panels, once pressurised at 35,000 feet, were cut down, surface-prepared and engraved in Germany, becoming the core material of the Aviationtag EI-CVC edition.
The process is more than clever recycling. It’s a form of storytelling by material. A passenger who once walked past the Aer Lingus titles on the side of EI-CVC at Dublin might now carry a white tag where a hint of green lettering still shines through. Someone who watched the aircraft taxi out in full shamrock livery might now clip a matching green tag to a carry-on bag.
Upcycling in this context means more than giving old metal a new function. It preserves an airframe’s identity long after its egistration has been wiped from the side. EI-CVC no longer lines up on Runway 28R – but pieces of its skin are still travelling, this time in pockets, on backpacks and on keys.
Part of a bigger picture
EI-CVC in the Fleet
To understand EI-CVC properly, you have to see it as part of the wider Aer Lingus story. Founded in 1936, the Irish flag carrier has flown everything from propeller-driven airliners to Boeing 707s and 747s, and later Airbus widebodies across the Atlantic.
When EI-CVC joined the airline in 2001, Aer
Lingus was deep into its transition toward an Airbus narrowbody fleet. The A320 family became the backbone of its European operations, replacing older types and standardising cockpits and maintenance. For years, aircraft like EI-CVC formed the workaday heart of the network, shuttling between Dublin, regional Irish airports and key destinations in the UK and continental Europe.
Today, Aer Lingus operates an all-Airbus mainline fleet: A320-200 and A320neo on short-haul, A321LR and A321XLR for thinner transatlantic routes, and A330-200 and A330-300 widebodies on busier long-haul sectors. Regional routes within Ireland and to nearby UK destinations are served by ATR 72-600 turboprops operated under the Aer Lingus Regional brand by Emerald Airlines, but the mainline green tail you see at large airports will sit on an Airbus.
Within this modernised, increasingly fuel-efficient fleet, older A320ceo aircraft like EI-CVC inevitably became candidates for etirement. Their departure marks a generational shift: the airline that once built its reputation on Boeing jets now leans heavily on advanced Airbus variants with longer range, lower emissions and more flexible cabin layouts.
EI-CVC’s exit from the active fleet is therefore more than just a single aircraft leaving the register. It’s a small but telling marker of how Aer Lingus has evolved – from the “Atari jet” era of the first fly-by-wire A320s, through economic cycles and brand refreshes, to a network built around A321LR/XLRs and next-generation widebodies.
For spotters at Dublin, EI-CVC’s absence from the daily movements board is a reminder that even the most familiar registrations do not last forever. For collectors, the Aviationtag edition offers something rarer: a chance to keep one of those registrations close, even after the aircraft itself has gone.
One aircraft, many stories
Share your EI-CVC Memory
All aviation history is, in the end, human history. EI-CVC never broke a record, never starred in a blockbuster or headlined an airshow. What it did do was quietly move millions of people between Ireland and the rest of the world, flight by flight, day by day.
Upcycling its skin into Aviationtags does not change that past, but it does give the aircraft a surprisingly intimate afterlife. A jet that once disappeared into the crowd at Dublin now reappears on individual keyrings and backpacks, pulling up fragments of memory each time someone picks it up.
Perhaps you remember an early morning departure from Dublin to London in green and white, or a rainy arrival back home after a delayed flight from the continent. Maybe you only realise now, looking at old photos, that the registration on the side was EI-CVC all along.
If you’ve ever flown Aer Lingus, spotted EI-CVC or simply have thoughts on upcycling aircraft into collectibles, we’d love to hear from you. Scroll down and share your stories, photos or routes in the comments:
Did EI-CVC ever carry you – and where were you headed? Tell us in the Comments.
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